Energy Use

The energy that crop production uses is a cost to the farmer. Energy used in crop production is commonly thought of as the fuel burned in tractors and other machinery, but it’s also the energy required to produce and transport machinery, fertilizers and other inputs. The CFPC’s energy use indicator provides a means of measuring this energy use per unit of crop production.

Overall, the production of each tonne of canola on Field 1 in 2013 required an estimated 8.5 Gigajoule of energy, which is 24.3% lower than the Alberta average of 8.9 GJ/tonne. The relative contributions of the modelled energy use categories (in GJ/tonne of crop) on this field in:

Fertilizer Manufacture

5.14 GJ/tonne

Harvest

0.47

Machinery Manufacture

0.39

Pesticide Manufacture

0.36

Seeding

0.06

Sprayer

0.02

This initiative has been made possible through Growing Forward 2, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative